Marmion quarterback eager to take reins

Published: Friday, June 21, 2013 5:34 a.m. CDT

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AURORA – It’s all on Brock Krueger.

Last season’s disappointing 4-5 campaign for the Marmion football team was trademarked by coach Dan Thorpe’s dual-quarterback system that featured shared duties for senior Charlie Faunce and Krueger, then a junior. But a year later, the job is solely Krueger’s, and he knows it’s up to him to return the Cadets to the postseason.

Pressure? What pressure?

“I’m excited. I’ve never been more excited for a season,” Krueger said. “It’s a different feel because you know going into it, coach Thorpe saying, ‘It’s all you this year.’ But having the coaches behind me and having the team behind me, knowing that they’re confident in me and I’m confident in them, it’s a different feeling. It feels great. I’m really excited.”

On the first day of Marmion’s summer camp earlier this week, Krueger was all smiles, and why shouldn’t he be? He said he was happy to gain experience in last season’s unique system, but this year the role of starting quarterback is all his, something he’s feverishly been working toward for years.

“This has been his dream since eighth grade,” Thorpe said. “He’s been going to a quarterback coach, and the kids know that. He’s really into it, and the kids respect him immensely for that. It’s important to him. He goes to a personal trainer, he goes to a quarterback coach, and yet he still comes to all of our stuff. He’s a team player.”

Quarterback coach, personal trainer, 7-on-7 team, college camps. The amount of football-related activities Krueger does away from the Marmion campus is certainly impressive. And it’s not just during the season, either.

Krueger said he has been doing this every week since the season ended. He does it “to try to keep the football mindset all year-round.”

Dedication is clearly not an issue for Krueger, nor is experience following last year’s playing time. It’s easy to see why he and Thorpe are excited for the possibilities of the upcoming season, and it’s also easy to understand how much hunger there is to avenge last year’s outcome.

“We know things happened last year, and obviously that wasn’t what we had planned,” Krueger said. “We wanted to make the playoffs, so 4-5 wasn’t in our head in the beginning when we started camp. But now we know. We’ve been there, we’ve had the 4-5 record. Now it’s time to come back, and it’s really time to work at it. And everyone has been working at it, so we’re all really positive and really excited to get at it.”

Though Krueger reports that the recruiting process is going well, he doesn’t want to focus on that. He has other things at the forefront of his mind, like accomplishing something special this year at Marmion.

After being handed sole possession of the quarterback position, he’s seeing this year as the chance to do just that.

“I’m feeling it’s more like I have this opportunity, what am I going to do with it?” Krueger said. “I want to out-do everything that’s ever been done here, and I want have a new record so that the kids below me can try to beat that.